The Great Malt Heist: the Origins of Vienna and Munich Malts
March 1, 2022
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The Great Malt Heist: the Origins of Vienna and Munich Malts
“Picasso had a saying – ‘good artists copy; great artists steal’ – and we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.” — Steve Jobs
Evidently, this applies to darn near anything. Case in point, the origins of our beloved Vienna and Munich malts. Staples of today’s brewing world, Vienna and Munich were birthed in the mid-1800s by two young men who went on an adventure that helped revolutionize their respective breweries and led to the creation of these two important malts that have stood the test of time.
The Industrial Revolution’s gifts of the steam engine and railway transportation allowed two friends – Austria’s Anton Dreher and Gabriel Sedlmayr II of Germany – to travel Europe in search of brewing knowledge. They spent years taking temperature readings, stealing wort samples, and doing fermentation analysis. They also learned of a then-new malting process in England.
Up until the early 1800s, grains were malted through a floor malting process heated by wood, coal, or coke. The heat was hard to control, which frequently led to a scorched and smoky end product. British engineer Daniel Wheeler invented a revolving drum kiln that was easier to control and allowed for more precise kilning. This provided an ability to create the lightly kilned malts that paved the way to the first English pale ales.
Dreher used this kilning process to create Vienna malt, which was based off of the English pale malt. Only he kilned at a slightly higher temperature that imparted a toasty, biscuity flavor to his malt, while still maintaining the characteristics necessary for its use as a base malt. Thus, the Vienna Lager was born.
Similarly, Sedlmayr used this new kilning process to develop his Munich malt. He kilned his malt at an even higher temperature and for a longer duration than Dreher, which created a more robust, sweeter malt. Sedlmayr used his malt to create the Märzenbier previously served at Oktoberfest.
Dreher Breweries exists to this day under the ownership of Asahi Breweries. Sedlmayr’s Spaten Brewery lives on as Spaten-Franziskaner-Bräu, one of the six brewers in Munich to brew beer for Oktoberfest.